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Miramonte Park: A Digital Playground for Children

An imaginary playground that brings out the best of both digital and real-life play for ages 3-to-6.

Miramonte Park: A Digital Playground for Children

An imaginary playground that brings out the best of both digital and real-life play for ages 3-to-6.

2 Campaigns |

Salt Lake City, United States

$2,769 USD 35 backers

5% of $55,000 Fixed Goal Fixed Goal

Story

FAQ

Updates 6

Comments 16

Highlights

2 Projects 2 Projects

I am Tina Ziemek, and I started Last of Five, LLC to create children’s play that is balanced, sincere, and promotes unity in a world where play is disproportionate, artificial, and promotes division. Our inaugural project, Miramonte Park, is a make-believe playground designed to bring out the best of both digital and real-world play for boys and girls ages 3-to-6. We intertwine digital learning games, which adults appreciate, free-play, which children love, and stories and real-world play in one single app.

Our playground is imaginary, and our storybooks are physical and digital. We found that many parents do not want to read eBooks with their child but want to participate in their child’s digital worlds. Our stories are written to be enjoyed by adults and children, and our interactive digital books offer children a unique window into the world.

We’ve created characters based off the five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and space, and have animal characters that are equals in our world. Our goal is to celebrate our place in nature. We want to acknowledge the magic of all of the elements but also help children understand what we know about nature, and how it works. For example, we illustrate the lifecycle of a plant, how snow forms, and why fire is hot.

The main characters are based off of the five elements (from left to right): water, earth, space, fire, and air. The story follows the space character named Violet.

The digital storybooks have learning games for when your children want to play on their own. These games allow children to practice a wide range of learning concepts including literacy skills, spatial skills, and empathy. Literacy develops self-image and provides a foundation for all other learning. Spatial ability lends itself to creativity and is correlated with success in various scientific and engineering disciplines. Empathy increases happiness, problem solving abilities, and courage.

In our first story, Alfie (the cat-like animal), has magic seeds that he offers Violet so she can plant them and make a wish. In the digital storybook, your child grows the plant by picking the correct seed, and giving it dirt, water, and sun. The child will see his or her plant throughout the story and will use it at the end of the story. Parents may be happy to know the magic seeds are not the solution to solving Violet’s problem. Instead, persistence, ingenuity, and teamwork save the day.

Video of Miramonte Park Prototype shown at 3.5x actual speed. There is no audio.

Our goal is to give an object at the completion of each learning game and turn these objects into toys your child can use in the playground's sandbox. For example, in the growing plants' game, your child will get a shovel that can be used for digging in the sandbox.

We will also provide ideas for real-world, hands-on activities that tie into the story and complement the digital games. These activities will emphasize free play and will turn household objects into playtime tools. Below is a paper-based activity we did at a local farmer's market where children designed their own flowers. Parents loved seeing their child's creative process, the flower their child made, and how each flower was unique to their child.

In another activity, we built terrariums so children could watch real plants grow over time and recognize everything doesn’t happen as quickly as it does in Miramonte Park. We encourage making the terrarium out of a large spaghetti sauce jar or similar object to emphasize the importance of reuse and recycling.

There is no shortage of apps available for children, but there is a shortage of high-quality learning apps. You can think of playing like eating, and buying toys like buying food. Many apps are sugary and salty bite-sized snacks. We have found these apps are primarily used to keep kids busy here and there.

Miramonte Park is the organic alternative and complete solution because we give children a rainbow of colors, stories, activities, games, and opportunities for free play and learning. We believe true, genuine play gives children the opportunity to learn on their own terms, grow their imagination, and be their true selves.

Our goal is to make screen time meaningful. We aim to be the center of a wide range of learning, where your child can make discoveries, and feel that learning is fun. We understand that you need Miramonte Park to help in times when your child is sick, unable to play outside, when you’re traveling, and when your child is begging to play on the iPad.

Our company, Last of Five, is focused on creating learning games, and we believe narrative is the fundamental form of human learning. We have made stories the heart of our world, so that the narratives and characters can create a whimsical and fantastical space for your child to imagine, play, and learn. We want children to be fully engaged with our world. By beginning with the storybook, we are creating a strong narrative that doesn’t sacrifice story for gameplay.

The second reason we’re starting with story is more personal – as game designers, we think the most compelling games have narrative. More broadly speaking, you can reduce the game design process to one of two basic approaches — you can start by creating a narrative — who the characters are, why they are doing what they are doing — or you can start by designing the game mechanics — the actions characters take such as jumping, flying, and things like that. By starting with narrative, we can be more creative with gameplay. And the more creative we can be as designers, the more creative our players will be when playing our games.

Montee is derived from the Spanish word "monte" for mountain. As Joseph Campbell noted, you are the central mountain, I am the central mountain, we are all the central mountain, and that is the mythological way of being an individual. We are all Montees, and that is what will make the park magical.

Our stories redefine archetypes, challenge stereotypes, support individuality, and give children the freedom to imagine. We intentionally mix up our color palette and do things like make the fire character purple. We emphasize that our differences can help us better understand our world. And our story follows our Space character, Violet, as she figures out what is unique about herself and that Montees are more similar than different.

We will build this playground one feature at a time. Join us on our path to learning through play!

Your involvement will make this playground better for all children. We want to hear from you via our community platform and incorporate your input and your feedback to design our world including using your characters, mythology, values, and aesthetics in our first story. Together we can create a collective wisdom where everyone's voice will be heard. You will make our playground something bigger than we can do ourselves.

Monte is Spanish for mountain. We have seven landmarks on our summit to establishing Miramonte Park.

Future Summits: We have lots of ideas for future development! You help us decide what to build next! Like . . .

a Yellow Slide with ideas for real-world hands-on games and activities,
fun, interactive storybook pages with animations to surprise and delight!
sandbox free play where objects collected from the story's games turn into toys! For example, children can collect a shovel from the plant growing game to make sand sculptures in their sandbox.
sticker and art books for creative play.
a teeter-totter for multi-player games, so two or more children can play together. Group activities are essential to developing empathy!
parents giving children sandbox toys for real-world behavior.
opportunities for parents to see their children's creative process.
different language translations such as Spanish and Mandarin.
Android and Fire OS versions of the app.

We're students and entrepreneurs and know how to get the most bang for our buck and keep overhead low. The majority of the funds will go toward educators to make learning goals, designers/producers/writer to create the digital book, and artists to make it look awesome!

Here is how the money will be spent:

$38,500: artists, educators, designers, producers, and writer's salaries (seven people over five months)

$3,800: administrative including lawyer, software, supplies, and equipment

$8,300: making and shipping physical perks

$4,400: indiegogo and paypal processing fees

Should we come in under budget, we will put the extra money to good use! For example, we will create additional book pages, extra characters, or create hands-on real world activities that come from the story.

Note, this is a "fixed funding" campaign, meaning if we don't hit our goal, all pledges will be refunded. We need the full amount in order to produce a complete book.

Last of Five will listen to your needs, feedback, and suggestions for our community playground. We value You, and our independent contributors: Tina Ziemek, Ph.D. (designer), J. Dianne Brederson, Ed.D. (curriculum), Natasha Wescoat (concept artist), Maria Solomou, Ph.D. (learning scientist), Sarah Ripley (engineer), Camille Pack (author), Jing Zeng (digital artist), Travis Turner (producer), Saumya Mukul (engineer), Jason Beck (street team), Lyn Christian (coach), J. Dean Brederson (early backer/advisor), and Peter Shirley, Ph.D. (early backer/advisor).

Read more about us in The Broomfield Enterprise and University of Utah's Lassonde Institute.

We have two main challenges right now. One, the financial support is a test and there is a possibility that we might have difficulties in supporting our staff to develop this game. Two, we need to convince the skeptics about the value of this game—however, we are on a good track so far, and are grateful to be receiving constructive feedback along with support from parents and educators. We understand there will be additional challenges, and we will be open and honest with you when they happen. Our team is experienced, grounded, and confident that together we can overcome the difficulties that lie ahead.

Remember the importance of free play in the life of a child. Playing is learning. Let children guide themselves and have self-directed adult-free play. Please pass along our message, and let's bring play back together! Thank You for your support!

Your world seems very ambitious in scope and you have a lot going on (arts, games, learning, stories); how are you managing all these ideas?

We are focusing on one piece at a time! We agree it’s an ambitious project, and we are making Miramonte Park because learning is playing, and playing is learning. We want to share our interests with children to inspire them to take on challenges.

Are you going to have boy characters?

We will create boy characters when the time is right. We would love to stay with the elemental theme of characters, and have boy characters be inspired by naturally occurring elements such as neon, helium, and titanium.

Your game seems feminine, is it a game for girls?

Our game is designed for all children. Some aspects of our world will be feminine, others masculine, and the rest somewhere in-between. We spent most of this past summer play-testing our game, and both boys and girls liked the game equally well. It was interesting to me, but frankly not surprising given my background building games and my access to learning and gaming research that neither the boys nor girls play-testing Miramonte Park really noticed the strong female presence in the game, and those that did notice did not seem to mind.

So, what turns out to be interesting, and potentially a challenge, is that adults — who buy these games for children — quickly and independently note character gender in Miramonte Park. This is not a game design issue per se in terms of enjoyability and playability, but this is something I have seen before — it is a marketing and presentation issue to parents, the economic buyer, rather than the kids.

We've thought about it deeply at Last of Five. It is puzzling that adults do not question whether the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is a world exclusively for boys because of its strong male presence!

Lastly, I think boys need strong female characters in games and books just as much as girls do, and taking different perspectives and gameplay strategies into account while designing yields better games. So we make games for everyone.

Why don’t you show any children in your videos/images?

We want Miramonte Park to speak for itself. We want you to imagine being part of this world, and decide if you like it. We are frustrated by a lot of the marketing that is directed toward children these days, and we do not want to be influenced by these tactics where children are used as propaganda to sell products.

What is your game design process?

By starting with the story, we are able to set ourselves up for success. We will decide where the digital learning games and real-world activities will go as we write the story. If we need to modify the story to accommodate a learning activity, we can. After the story is set, we can dive deeper into creating the learning games and real-world activities. We will create the real-world activities first to keep children engaged with our world as we develop the digital games. This process will also give children the freedom to play and imagine and make up their own games before they play ours. We will then create each digital game and publish them as we complete them.

$505 USD

Lift off! Soar with us and sponsor one numbered page in our first storybook and receive the signed original drawing of your page + Miramonte Park skateboard deck for when you land + Water Perks!

Estimated Shipping

August 2015

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